Security guards to be posted at city's elementary schools

Maggie Gordon

Updated 9:46 pm, Saturday, December 29, 2012

STAMFORD -- When Stamford's students return to school on Wednesday, they'll be greeted with heightened security, including the introduction of security guards stationed at each of the city's 12 elementary schools, in the wake of the tragic shooting in Newtown, which took the lives of 20 young students and six women.

There are already security guards stationed at the district's five middle schools and school resource officers at Stamford's three high schools. Like other security guards, the men and women to be deployed at the elementary schools will not be armed.

For Jerry Pia, fiscal chairman of Stamford's school board, the measure is simply the right thing to do.

"Everybody's very concerned about school safety and that's the most important thing," Pia said Friday evening." You want to have a great teacher, but you also have to make sure before you go into that classroom that the building is safe to go into."

Schools Superintendent Winifred Hamilton and her staff are stepping up other security measures across the city's schools. The district's Director of Safety John Perrotta has reviewed the schools' safety protocol, including the regularly scheduled lockdown and evacuation drills, safety committee meetings and periodic spot checks of buildings and grounds. In addition, entrance requirements for visitors have been tightened and building staff have been told to "challenge all visitors and report any suspicious activity," according to a letter Hamilton sent home to parents on Friday.

"Security and safety are about being diligent each and every day," Hamilton wrote in the letter. "Working together, I know we will continue to make our schools as safe as we can to protect our students and staff while we succeed in the important job of educating our children."

But the issue of paying for 12 additional security guards, which will add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the district's ever-growing budget will likely continue as the budget season for the upcoming fiscal year officially begins in the next two weeks.

The measure will be paid for with money previously earmarked for classroom supplies at the schools, according to Beadle. But that kind of an expenditure won't easily be funded by piecing together dollars meant for pencils and paper, so Hamilton will meet with the city's Board of Finance and Board of Representatives this week to ask for a supplemental appropriation.

"I think we have shown that the education budget is very, very tight and I think the fiscal committee is going to have to work very hard to make some recommendations on where to find that money," Board of Education President Geoff Alswanger said Saturday.

"This is a prudent move in the interim, and we'll hopefully learn more about what the best practices are so we can move forward with a long term plan," he said.